While leading his long-horned oxen and playing his organetto, Peppe de Lillo sang le pasquarelle (traditional mountain verses) in harmony with a tambourine-player, launching Cascia’s “Festa delle Tradizioni Rurali”. Medieval hilltown, Cascia, is famous for St. Rita (born there in the 14th century), black truffles, pecorino cheeses, saffron – and now – for la roveja.…
Founder of the concept of the albergo diffuso (“scattered hotel” might be the best translation?), Giancarlo dall’Ara summed it up this way: “I think of an albergo diffuso as a novel that tells the story of a culture. Guests are brought into the story temporarily so they can better understand the way of life.” We…
L’Aquila’s Christmas-market booths are backdropped by scaffolded buildings, devastated in the 2009 earthquake. A towering Christmas tree laced with dim twinkling lights in the main square stands tall in front of the scaffolded cathedral, the long arm of a huge crane stretched over it, like a cumbersome arm. But the Christmas gift-giving has started in…
Pino had warned me not to hang the braids of purple onions over the stove: “troppo caldo – spunteranno” (“too hot – they’ll sprout”). Of course, i knew he was right – but I loved the onion and garlic braids dangling over the stove. The other day, I decided to eliminate the sprouted purple onions…
Fewer guided Umbrian hill town requests in November means I have more time to join Pino on his frequent trips to L’Aquila. His restoration team – Impresa Edile Alagna – is nearing completion of restoration on three apartment buildings damaged by the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake. Pino might not miss his trips to the jobsite in…
When only green tomatoes remain on the plants, you know summer is over. But summer lingered on this year: we gathered our green tomatoes at the end of November – and picked quite a few ripe ones still on the plants along with them. They’ve been turned into a green tomato relish. Best way to…
I was “along for the ride” with Pino as he headed from L’Aquila to Atessa in southeast Abruzzo to check out a possible restoration project. Along our route, medieval hill towns clinging to forested mountains and here and there, in a field, a crumbling medieval church, needing restoration. Sweeping his hand across the burnished orange…
The last – and only time – we turned our own grapes into wine was in 1975, our first year on the land in Umbria. The land and farmhouse had been abandoned for ten years prior, detrimental to the vineyard. Phylloxera had taken over. As we picked our meagre yield with farm friends, Peppe and…
Sunday’s salad was a special one. The radicchio and salad greens came right from the garden and even though early November, I washed them outside in a warm and buttery sun. I now often wash our salad in a most special spot: at an old pump Pino has installed just outside our front door, beak…
Pino will be coming to L’Aquila three times weekly for a couple of years now, as his company is restoring an apartment complex (three buildings) damaged in the devastating April 2009 earthquake. If I do not have tours on one of the days he comes to L’Aquila to check on his jobsite, I join him…